lurch

AMEN! (Rub it in old man, why don'cha.) Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Well, whatddya know. The military actually being used for actual defense of American citizens for a change. Got in, killed the bad guys, got our people safe and got out. Now thats national defense I can get behind and applaud. And for once I think maybe our gov't is telling the truth on this one too. Good job gentlemen, and thank you. Betcha the Somalis were pissed... "we were gonna sell her for ten million!" Don't, kidnap, people. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I can buy her more jumps... ain't got much money but for a woman like that, I'd find it... the married with kids part, thats a bit of a barrier, there I wouldn't mess with. Bummer. How come all the worlds truly badass women are all taken? Or, rather, have taken guys for themselves already. Oh well, I betcha she makes a badass Mom. What I wouldn't give to find my other half and discover she's got that much of a cool collected head on her shoulders... There is nothing more attractive than a woman with a mind like that. *goes back to looking for one* -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

"she looks me right in the eye and smiles: checks her altimeter: and then does a practice touch while on her back." RESPECT! I want her phone number! Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Skwrlbrother, this thread may have taken a hard left, but reading it was so much fun. This is the second time Giselle has popped in and proceeded in the most hilariously condescending fashion to tell every actual wingsuit pilot that disagrees with her that they are ignorant and speaking nonsense. Backing this up with the apparent sincere position that she knows what we will and will not be capable of far better than we who do it, based on her experience flying other things, Bio background, and speaking from actual experience or knowledge of wingsuit flight of exactly... nothing. I could steal this and use it as a comedy gag, man. I'm gonna go pick an argument with Danica Patrick on the internet and tell her she speaks nonsense when she tells me about realities of racing. Even though I've never been behind the wheel of anything like a real race car in my life and never been on a track, I'm gonna tell her I know far better than she what racers will be able to do in the future because I'm a mechanic and I know stuff about wheels. Its like one of those jerk gag reels I used to hear on the radio from that station in Boston. Giselle, when I get to the touchy parts of my latest little wingsuit design project, I will be sure to call on you and your superior knowledge of the interior of a chicken to tell me how I really ought to be doing it. Thank you for your contribution to our community. Its not the contribution you wanted to make, but it is appreciated, nonetheless. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

That was so awesome and so horrible at the same time, I'm going to go microwave some ice cream and try not to think about it. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Agreed. Its a vile and disgusting gesture of contempt and disrespect. I don't know where the hell the trend of "teabagging" comes from but it needs to go away. I've intervened when I saw some jackasses about to do it to someone else, and if it was ever attempted on me, the bagger would become sterile very shortly with extreme and vicious prejudice. The kind of prejudice you need a urologist and a reconstructive surgeon to fix. What the hell happened to respect and treating each other like human beings? Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I'm impressed. Wikipedia's act- finally, telling the government fuck no, you go too far. And backing it up with a demonstration threat: Back off or we pull the plug. Seeing this, I thought, wouldn't it be awesome if Google did the same, dug its heels in a little and jerked their chain instead of rolling over like they did with the chinese censorship stuff? I stop by google to look for something else, and... Googles not shut down, but they've also gone black in solidarity. I think the government's in for a painful lesson, that you can't beat arrest or pepperspray an internet protest. Purely symbolic, would have been MUCH more effective if Google shut down for a day, but wonderful to see. The people coming up with laws like these, they never stop, they never give up, they get shot down and 5 more bills like it take their place, an endless march of more confiscation, registration, control, things like the NDAA sail right through, completely ignoring what used to be the Bill of Rights and has become the "Bill of conditionally revokable privileges you -may- be allowed to purchase permits for, IF you can afford the lawyers". For every scrap of freedom temporarily preserved, ten are lost and next year there will be another SOPA or NDAA or PATRIOT or whatever to make sure to strip away that last scrap. Its just satisfying to see actual, effective defiance and resistance for once. Especially since almost all forms of defiance and resistance are, of course, felonies these days. To quote Savio, "And you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who own it, and the people who run it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!" Wikipedia just did that. They indicated it loud and clear. I hope to see this grow. I wonder if the government is going to go after the US Wiki staff, threaten em with being charged as disruptive internet terrorists for withdrawing that which they provided for free in the first place... Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Forget the video. Just go for the experience. I did, some 14 years ago. Then came back for another. And another. 5 years of that and I signed up for lessons. 10 years later it has altered my life beyond all recognition. More friends than I can count. Experiences so mindblowing I jump up and down hollering inarticulate gibberish that usually ends in "YEAH!" I've now got thousands of wingsuit skydives under my belt and I'm only going to stop when I am so old I'm physically unable to put on a rig and fly anymore or I'm eaten by something bigger. Do it. Do it. Do it. After, you'll wonder if you ever really lived, before... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Well, unfortunately looks like its not going to happen. Stumpy had a rough year- one legged guy stepped on a nail, now I ask you, does reality have a cruel sense of humor, or what? You'd think his odds of catching a nail in the foot would be half that of average. Anyway he only got in a small handful of jumps this season. He's motivated but in rough enough shape physically that making just a few jumps wipes him out pretty good. So I think we're gonna just kind of drop the idea and let it go. If he starts again next season and works his ass off, I'm still willing to try to get him winging, but I'm not holding my breath. Guy's got a lot going against him lately, or did last time we spoke. Bummer, but the impression I get is the guy is just too beat up to go at skydiving hard enough to be a candidate for wingsuits. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

If you can whup my ass with one, I'll buy one. I'll even fly the S instead of the Apache, just to be nice. SUIT WARS!!! Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

"I think you're getting a bit caught up on my choice of words." Fair enough. I may be reading too much into that. The video of the Miami Tailstrike is around here somewhere. Now those guys, they were projecting bigtime. The whole point of Arch and Scrunch is that in any air at any speed from any angle you're arching into, arching creates maximum possible fallrate. I use arch and scrunch in aggressive flocking as an evasive ninja trick: many times I've had a bird closing on me from the side at speeds I knew at a glance they could neither turn nor brake and a collision was guaranteed. I yank in all wings and arch like hell, surprise sudden plummet, nobody ever thinks to turn their wings off to GAIN mobility and its amazing how few birds actually think in 3D. Works great, just ducks right under the out of control bird. Time after time something coming at me and I think "DOWN!" Looking down on exit feels like drop like a rock but it isn't. Its actually prolonging your exit hover time measurably. I didn't give a complete description of my Otter speed exit technique. The next step after arch and scrunch was the tail popping open, which would flop me flat in an instant as I was ducking under the tail. At that instant the only thing keeping me alive was that I knew not to look down because if I look down at 140 knot exit speed I pop up in a millisecond and get decapitated by the tail I'm trying to avoid being driven into. Its THAT twitchy, playing with speeds that high that close to the plane. The next step after that was to open my wings and put my head down and look down, letting my upper body flop flat and level with the legs thus gaining maximum possible cupping action combined with the flop-flat move. Resulting in catapulting myself several hundred feet above the Otter easily, but only after having to duck under the tail at 140 knots to do it. I'd say THIS "I've been watching newbie WSers arch out the door like they've been taught (not by me ) , with their wings open like PROPER dicks." Is what set you up to exit the way you do. Bad examples, done badly. Whoever taught those new birds to arch out the door with wings open is a hazard to our profession. Since you already know better, how come you ain't teachin' em not to? Anyway I get what you're sayin', the look where you want to go and go there bit. Thing is, thats essentially a higher-level thought-ninja thing. A newer bird isn't going to integrate that with the essentials of the movement, they'll physically interpret it literally- look down, cupping the chest and shoulders while they're at it- and then all it takes is a little loose wing, and up they go... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Trae, a short story just to highlight the physics, man. 6 years ago I flew a little GTI. Had me a pilot willing to give me whatever exit speeds I wanted-in an Otter. I therefore learned the insane art of high speed exits with wingsuits- from Otters. Up to 140 knots. Eventually had my own feature article in the Boston Globe with video online. The key to survival: Arch and scrunch. Wings wrapped around me with my hands gripping fistfuls of the other arm's fabric at the shoulders. I could not keep the tailwing closed completely. Not possible. The act of stepping out the door opens it enough that when the wind hit my legs, SNAP, tailwing gets slammed open and out. Result: am flying while still hovering in the doorframe. At enhanced levels of windblast. Ballistic energy levels in a confined area. Very intelligent. Under those conditions the only way to maintain control and keep from getting lofted any higher than a brief steady-state hover just outside the door was to arch as hard as possible. If I'd done anything else, I'd have died as fast as Steve. I stopped performing that little stunt right about when Machs hit the market so I wouldn't set a bad example and because I knew damn well if it was barely survivable in a GTI, trying it with anything bigger would be bad... A few years later, Steve stumbled on just the right technique to accidentally copy that stunt- unsuccessfully. If Steve had kept the habit of arching and scrunching he'd have lived. "Projecting" yourself out the door is a really bad idea man, seriously. It isn't about "getting flying sooner" its about control. Your approach to exits kind of sounds like since you didn't learn or weren't taught a stable exit you resorted to "flinging" yourself like a wild hard throw to get clear. Dealing with a control problem by resorting to an even less controllable technique isn't much of a solution, man. And it may work acceptably well for solos but for any serious flocks with serious pilots, the ability to just step out drop into flight and turn with the others is kind of a prerequisite expectation. A fundamental basic wingsuit handling skill. I'd like to respectfully suggest that the string of mishaps you describe taught you the wrong lessons and prevented you from learning proper wingsuit exit management by causing you to cope with the problems with on the spot improv which in time became normal for you. Further I'd guess you've relatively limited flock experience or else you'd have eventually noticed you're the "odd-man-out" where everyone else is exiting standard flock style while you're still doing the headfirst nosedive thing. Even if you didn't notice, the rest of the flock would. Not to pick on you at all, just a suggestion from one pilot to another that this is a gap in your training you ought to remedy and which both puts you in extreme danger and severely limits your available wingsuit experience until you do. Large flocks, world records, competition, I do all of those, and in any of those events if I was exiting like that I'd be either punted from the record effort for lack of skill or laughed at. Or both. No offense. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Trae. I don't want to be a dick here but this will get people killed. I always teach new birds to look at the prop. It causes an arch directly into relative wind ensuring most stable exit. And it ensures their initial fallrate ramps up as fast as possible. Looking down causes a dearch and if you wanted to inadvertently teach someone to launch themselves straight into the tail, THATs how. Looking down gets one of two results. 1: commonly seen in students: Body follows eyes, bird's flightpath tips over immediately facefirst and steep, often into a spiral. Safe enough regarding the tail but no good for anything else. 2: Bird looks down, body rears up, combined with looking down the student has just inadvertently executed a radical "Pop" maneuver which I would normally only teach them to use when they need to climb hard and fast up to a flock far above them- and gets catapulted helplessly into the tail some 750mS later. What do people do when they need to SHED drag and jack up the fallrate? ARCH! What do they do if they need to CLIMB? !!!Look Down!!!! Arch And Scrunch. Anything else and you're begging for a quick death. Teaching anything else is how we get Miami Tailstrike. The LAST thing you want to do is encourage a technique that creates ideal conditions for maximum possible exploitation of available lift in the moment of exit! End rant -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Oh, and for what its worth, your exit style is pretty close to what I used to use to get off a Cessna without dying when I first started using a suit big enough to loft me involuntarily even at slow exit speeds. (S-Bird) Except I'd plant feet on the step instead of kneeling, then topple over forward and outward at close to a 90 degree to line of flight, objective being I don't care HOW I hit the air just so long as I miss that damn tail! After a couple repeats, I incorporated the necessary 90 degree left turn correction into the move itself- as my head clears the strut I'm beginning to turn but the turn is not complete and I can't get linear windblast lofting effects till I'm already 30 feet below and behind the plane- by which time it doesn't matter anyway. I eventually worked my way up to launching scrunched, poised, off the step, clinging to the strut, but even now, it still makes me a bit nervous. Even as scrunched as I can get, I still get noticeable loft off the relative wind. Its not much, but its the difference between clearing the tail instantly in a straight down drop, versus clearing the tail in .5 seconds... during that .5 seconds I'm not quite hovering directly in front of the tail edge and counting on gravity to pull me below the tail's plane before I drift far enough back to reach it. And I actually wrap my wings around me tightly and dive off headfirst whenever I have any doubt at all. Theres just NO room for error there... kinda surprised we haven't had a bunch of cessna tailstrikes by now, that exit is EASY to screw up. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Now THATS more like it.

Hate to give an unsatisfying answer, but, like Jarno, I gotta say "Skills". I'm currently holding the slot for 3rd longest freefall ever recorded for a 1000 meter drop in competition, ahead of a vast pack of X2's, Venoms, etc. I did it with an S-Bird just to be a punk. Its not even on your list. It is not the suit that allows the pilot to fly long and far. The suit only enables further performance if the pilot knows how. The top 3 suits seem to be X2, Venom and Apache. Till the next model comes out anyway. We don't need a poll to tell us that. The other 4 of the top 5 distance pilots above my rank are all flying Apaches. The remaining two above my rank in Time are both flying X2's. I'm buying an Apache now because I actually DO need the extra power it offers to up my game in my comp career and the only way I'm gonna get the additional 15 seconds and 500 meters I need to claim #1 in either Time or Distance is if my gear is up to the same spec as the last few birds at the very top because they really DO know how to use their megasuits to their limits and although I can compete with that in a "small" suit I can't beat it. There would be more serious contenders and high rankholders in Medium-grade suits if more pilots would actually learn to USE the suit they've GOT. I'm only going to gain a few percent performance from the Apache and the only place that amount matters is in competition against a field so small you could fit all of us in a Cessna. People keep asking your question hoping to buy their way to impressive performance. It is not going to happen. Instead what we get is tailstrikes. I know contributing to this was not your intention with this poll, but the poll reinforces the same thinking that got us into this situation to begin with- pilots asking "whats the max" and then going directly to that max without bothering with the discipline behind its use. To quote Tolkien, "Perilous to us all are the devices of an art deeper than we possess ourselves. " We'd be better off if we could convince the up-and-coming birds to spend the money on JUMPS instead of useless upgrades. Buy the suit, get frustrated because somehow you're still not flying like "those guys in megasuits" Spend it on jumps, you can get the performance without bothering with the suit. I'm living proof of that. But nobody notices... they just keep buying the suits... and asking your question. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

In a word, NO. Brick, that exit style will complicate flocks a bit just because it takes you longer to get yourself sorted once you're clear of the aircraft... or at least longer than facing forward which allows you to "hit the air running" so to speak. But you're a really big guy, right? In anything smaller than an Otter you'd HAVE to kneel wouldn't you? So a scrunched but poised exit from a standing position is all but out of the question for you isn't it? I say nothing wrong with it at all actually. Sounds like you've worked out a pretty much perfect technique for big-guy-clean-exit-tail-dodging. Toppling out the door from your knees eliminates any possibility of jumping up, or catching sufficient air to be lofted up against your will. Judging by your description, you've got it nailed- its less graceful and smooth than just stepping out, but it is pretty much guaranteed to keep you from hitting that tail which is the -ONLY- thing that actually matters. It sounds like a clumsy way to exit but I'd bet that if you keep doing it that way your technique will become very fluid and slick if it hasn't already. I'd say keep doing it that way- and tell people WHY. It'll help us keep newbs alive. And on behalf of the community, thank you for putting some thought into it. We need more birds who carefully consider their technique like that. I wish we had more birds that smart, it'd cut down on our incident rate. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

It is. But it is ultimately the jumper's responsibility to be aware of WTF is going on around them. The Miami tailstrike, people were starting to try to find some way to blame the pilot. This is bullshit. The lack of a cut or a high exit speed are incredibly obvious to any slightly seasoned jumper. And there shouldn't BE any non-slightly-seasoned wingsuit pilots. When I get unexpectedly high exit blast in the door, I either look at the pilot expectantly and wait, or scrunch up wicked small and exit anyway. This is not rocket surgery. We only lost Steve because the brother let his guard down for a second. So DON'T. See my sig line for instructions. Lets keep getting the word out, shout it from the rooftops if we have to. Add it to the customary battlecry in the plane... "Check your gear!!! Watch the tail!!!" I've lost enough friends already. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Ok so we got votes for: 1 its payphone cable jacket and 2 Its a mil-spec material. Just to be sure I think I'll order it from those guys upthread a bit. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

??? Electrical conduit not from electrical industry... lemme guess... payphone industry. And hey, Jerry, thanks especially for the dimensions. Kinda hard to measure the stuff and the spec is important. I want this to work exactly the same as normal chop and reserve pulls and without those dimensions I might have used the wrong stuff in the wrong size conduit and then been puzzled as to why its a hard pull. Even when I'm doing something wild like this I prefer to rely on prior art whenever possible. Lot of fatalities went into working out exactly what works best in details like these, and I'm trying to pull off something new, not kill myself reinventing the wheel on some detail it'd turn out Bill Booth worked out 30 years ago if only I'd looked or thought to ask. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

...and JR: You're kidding me. It really -is- just plain small format electrical flex conduit? Hell. Thats exactly what it looked like and I figured no WAY its just plain conduit, gotta be some special stuff made differently with a snag free low friction interior or something specific for rigs and aviation cable-pull-thingy applications. If I'd had any handy out of a rig that was disposable I'd have peeled the stuff apart to see how the inside is setup, try to find something similar. No need now. Thanks a lot guys, Jerry I'll check these guys out. Now that I know its just electrical I can check local electrical suppliers too. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Hi. I don't often step in here but have question. Am doing a little custom wingsuit design and I'm in need of some cable housing. I can't seem to find what the heck the stuff is actually called. Paragear has it, calls it "housing" and only sells it in fixed lengths for high prices. I need more like 20-30 feet of the stuff as I will be doing a good deal of "why don't I stop right about here" engineering and I need to be able to pick my own lengths plus change lengths if necessary. Probably making multiple models so I need quite a bit more than enough for just one suit. Anybody got any idea where I can get a decent sized coil of the stuff? Max I'm likely to need'd be about 50 feet so I can just cut to length without worrying about running out halfway through the next piece of work. I understand the stuff needs to be capped and terminated correctly. I am prepared to do my own termination/deburring/coating if I must, but I would vastly prefer to stick to established methods if at all possible. The design is radical enough without taking stupid chances on small details. So if anyone can also point me in the direction of what the heck to use to do the job properly and where to get it I'd be mighty obliged. PS: to any worriers, this is not the first wingsuit I've constructed from scratch using what any sane rigger would consider lunatic construction. I -am- aware of the consequences of a mistake with this stuff and I build my stuff accordingly. Last suit I made was radical beyond anything anyone has seen in basic design, (search Hardcase if you care), and it worked fine totally uneventfully. Unfortunately the fit and comfort left a lot to be desired... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Personally I suggest dry cleaning. Tried it on an S-6 that was hopelessly destroyed by getting soaked with motor oil from a container that burst in my jeep during a rough moment while dodging a car accident. A dozen washings had no effect at all. The suit was totalled. The suit was returned to me in gleaming white like-new condition. As if they had somehow remanufactured it. Weirdest thing I ever saw, all frayed and beat up, but so screaming pure white it simultaneously looked as if it had never been used. Even the booties and the patches on the knees were pure white. No smell either. I paid em double what they charged me for saving my suit. It was worth it. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Welcome back, brother. The wingsuit world missed ya, but I think you'll like what we've done with the place in your absence. 3.5 minute flights are now fairly common and a few of us can do 4. The maneuver named after you, Scary Rolls, went from a theoretical possibility to something we can actually do, or at least those of us prone to acro and creative flying anyway. Theres a lot of politics and backstabbers in the sport these days, fighting over prestige, position and stuff, but when have -they- ever mattered? Some things never change and those people are still missing the point. The wingsuit community has grown bigtime. When you retired there were, what, a few hundred wingsuiters in the US, tops? We gotta be up to a couple thousand by now. Suits are everywhere. And I've trained, what, 5 or 6 more seasons' worth of new birds feedin' em stories about -The- Scary Perry. So when you get back up to these parts you'll find that there's a small army of birds up here that know your name as legend. I've got a few star apprentices from previous seasons that'd love to fly with ya anyday, and I ain't been teachin' em no dirty flyin', either. I'd like to think you'd have been proud if you'd been there to see it all. After all you're still among the craziest of all of us and one of the ones who got the whole ball rolling in the first place. PEACE! -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.